Notre Dame Uni partners with Behind Closed Doors on short courses

The University of Notre Dame will offer six-week courses on finance and financial literacy to give more women access to postgraduate qualifications.

The University of Notre Dame will offer short course in finance aimed at assisting women to progress to postgraduate study.

The University of Notre Dame will start offering, short six-week microcredentials on finance and financial literacy next year which will help prepare more women to study for postgraduate qualifications.

The university will join with women’s development company Behind Closed Doors to offer the courses which cover practical topics in working with finance and money such as salary negotiations, superannuation and dealing with banks.

Behind Closed Doors has also backed a new double masters degree in leadership combined with an MBA which has been launched by Notre Dame. It can be completed in three segments – certificate, diploma and full masters – over an extended time frame to assist women who have career and life commitments. The two masters degrees can also be completed individually.

Teaching for the degrees is in five-week modules, and online lectures and tutorials are outside business hours.

Donny Walford, founder and managing director of Behind Closed Doors, said she would be among the first group of women to complete the masters in leadership. “It will be so rewarding to see who will join this amazing course with me and see first-hand the knowledge gained as well as the resulting growth of participants,” she said.

Behind Closed Doors members will receive a scholarship worth 20 per cent of tuition fees and have access to a national network of businesswomen to assist with their studies.

A goal of Behind Closed Doors is to get more executive women on Australian boards.

Ms Walford was the first woman appointed internally to senior management at the State Bank of South Australia in 1992, but it was not until 2015 that she sat across from another woman in a boardroom.

Michael Quinlan, Notre Dame’s national head of the School of Business and Law, said the partnership with Behind Closed Doors would “help women excel in their careers, grow the presence of women in corporate Australia and develop more services and programming at Notre Dame around the critical topic of financial literacy.”